AUSTRALIANS AT WAR

THE NEW AMERICAN CENTURY is a compelling factual history of neoconservatism and its influence on US Foreign Policy in the Middle East during the first decade of the twenty-first century. Click on image above for details.

Saturday, July 15, 2006

DID THE PALESTINIANS REALLY DIG A TUNNEL UNDER THE NOSES OF THE ISRAELIS?

I don’t know what has happened to Cpl. Gilad Shalit. I don’t know if he was captured, or, if he was, I don’t know how he was captured. Frankly, I don’t even know that he actually exists apart from the pictures of him that we have all seen. One hopes that these are all questions that will eventually be answered.

I do know, however, that there is something extraordinarily odd about the story the Israeli Defence Force claim is behind his disappearance. In particular it’s the part about the tunnel which I can’t get to grips with.

As an engineer I’ve given the notion of digging a tunnel which the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs tells us was some 650 metres long,[1] dug under sand across the Gaza border into Israel some thought. I’m beginning to wonder whether this is actually feasible especially considering that it would have to be built covertly and across the terrain that Israel claims. A 650 metre long covert tunnel being constructed under sand is a considerable undertaking the logistics of which would be enormous. The tunnel, even a crawl tunnel measuring 900mm x 900mm in cross section, would require 100% full shoring if actually constructed in sand and at least 60% if constructed in clay/soil. That means all that shoring material, literally tonnes of it, would have to be loaded down the shaft of the tunnel head and then transported along the tunnel to the tunnel face where one man at the face would have to position it and then excavate out the next section of tunnel with all the problems that that involves in shifting the excavated material back down the tunnel to the head shaft where it would have to be disposed of. Rock would be out of the question because of the noise of hammering through it and the extra logistics of getting hammer equipment to the face.

Now, 0.9m wide x 0.9m high x 650m long tunnel would require 526 cubic metres of excavation to be removed at, say, 1.3 tonnes per cubic metre if dry, that’s 684 tonnes of dirt to dispose of. A good three-axle semi trailer would take about 30 tonnes a load so that’s about 23 semi-trailer loads.

A tunnel this size will also require ventilating. This could be done by boring vertical holes to the surface and simply casing the holes with flexible plastic pipe. However, there is a very large section of ploughed-up no-mans land that is under constant surveillance and a few bits of pipe sticking up out of the ground could arouse a suspicion that we be an unacceptable risk. Alternatively, a simple fan could be used to pump air along the tunnel but to fully ventilate a 650m long tunnel would require a fairly large fan to counter the back pressure of such a long pipe. Not impossible, but a lot of work.

The real problems in building a tunnel under these conditions is 1) the problem of disguising the head shaft of the tunnel, which could be solved by building from within an existing structure like a house or a shed, though this would not solve the problem of 2) disguising the delivery of equipment and shoring material and, worse, disposing of the excavated material.

The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs in their communiqué have included a photo-map of where they claim the incident took place and even where the tunnel is supposed to be. From this it is very easy to locate the same spot on Google Earth.[2]

The images for this area are exceptionally clear and one can see very clearly the area being referred to and the adjoining and adjacent areas including the old and now disused Gaza airport. (One can clearly see that sections of the runways have been ripped up rendering them unserviceable.) One can also see clearly the area of no-mans land between the paddocks on the Israeli side of the fence where the Israeli soldiers were said to be and the sole small building that appears to be no larger than a shed where, if a tunnel was built at all, the head shaft would be located. Running the computers cursor from the paddocks to the shed and surrounding area one will notice that elevations vary only a few feet over many hundreds of metres. In other words the land is all but flat. One will also notice that it is featureless in terms of trees. All of this means that Israeli observation conditions of the area is very good. Very little over a period of time would escape surveillance their.

The bottom line is that it would be impossible to build a tunnel, especially under these conditions of secrecy that one needs to ask; was there really a tunnel? And, if not, then what’s the real story? Why have the Israelis lied – again?

35 comments:

I have come to the exact same conclusions myself. I have to wonder why, if they had found such an explicit piece of evidence, there are no photographs of the tunnel or the 'supposed' tank. I have a feeling that Mr. Shalit exists nowhere except on a disc somewhere in the heart of "israel's" computer generated mainframe.

These questions shall remain a conundrum much like the pulverization of two unnamed buildings and the televised example of turbidity that most people in the world still have not completely realized.

I was curious and did a (quick) search on these Gaza tunnels. Interesting results :

- that one reported on CNN was 20 meters long.- That one was 75 feet (25 meters) long.

- That one is interesting : described as a "huge tunnel" by the israeli source, it was...10 meters deep (about 30 feet) and 50 meters (about 150 feet) long. If 50m is 'huge', how to describe a 650m tunnel?

The British TV media said that the tunnel was 350m long and showed VT of what they said was the Israelis blowing it up. Bearing in mind that this is a sensitive border regularly patrolled by trained military, how did the Palestinians complete the tunnel on the Israeli side without being spotted?

I notice the image posted on the story has a line overlayed indicating the path of the tunnel. I examined the area on Google Earth I notice that there are a series of discolorations which run from the building in Gaza (31° 14' 21.71 N, 34° 17' 06.06" E) which runs 1900 meters towards a point at (31° 13' 25.56" N, 34° 17' 40.69") in Israeli territory. Amazing that it is in an image that existed before this whole thing blew up. Maybe the tunnel was going the other direction.

This article on the Rafah tunnels says the cross-section is 2' x 2'4" which at 0.433m^2 is about half the above estimate, and at 650m length and 1300 kg/m^3 weighs in at some 366 tonnes to be excavated. If a typical day is 13 yards of progress and one yard is nine buckets of sand, they have 117 bucketfuls to dispose of per day. If a 770 yard tunnel takes up to 6 months to finish, that's only about 13 feet per day as a lower estimate. They have to fit in the wiring, lighting, intercom, hose and vacuum cleaner to draw in air, and the pulley system.This Israeli government site (which shows pictures of tunnel mouths) quotes only 0.4m x 0.4m for the horizontal sections which would appear too small. The motivation for the tunnels would be large profits from arms smuggling. However, if the tunnels are genuine, on previous form the Israeli government claim of an abducted soldier is probably false. And consider the timing of the Mumbai 7/11 attacks as Israel launched its Lebanon offensive on another abducted soldier or soldiers pretext. It is interesting that India has probably done more than any other nation to annoy Israel in the two weeks leading up to 7/11.

An anonymous person above reckons: "Your words might mean something in this argument is [sic] you were a neutral party, but since you have obviously chosen your side, you're just another propoganda tool."

Really? And this is important when considering the logistics of tunnel building because...???

Hi, I'm sympathetic to the idea that this is yet another 'false flag' op. The invasion of Gaza was planned months before Corpora Shalit was 'kidnapped'.However, if this is Israeli disinformation, why has it not been denied by Palestinian sources? On the contrary, we have Hamas confirming that they dug the tunnel and captured the soldier. Are we to believe that the Hamas leadership is colluding with the IDF/Mossad?

hi - I'm completely sympathetic to the idea that the official story doesn't make material sense (as with the events of 9/11), and that there is good reason to suspect some kind of black ops - especially as the invasion of Gaza had been planned months before.But that still leaves the problem as to why Hamas would collude by claiming to have pulled off this seemingly impossible feat (the building of the tunnel). The capture of the soldier could have been faked, or some deal done which allowed Hamas to get some kudos from the capture - but would Hamas really collude in actions that provided the spurious excuse for the invasion?

Evolutionhound, you bring up a point that I also pondered whilst writing the article.

My thoughts are thus; since the Israelis were looking for a casus belli to go into the Gaza, it would suit them to concoct a story about Palestinians going into Israel and ‘kidnap’ an Israeli soldier. But how to get the Palestinians to do this? Answer, you don’t. You get a few soldiers to go across the fence into the Gaza on the pretext that they are doing some covert operation. Then you let the Palestinians know via the local spy network that a few Israeli soldiers will be on the Gaza side and that it is just a small covert force going in to, say, plant tunnel detection microphones on the no-mans section inside the Gaza. The Palestinians surprise the party and grab one of the soldiers. Just to make the ‘kidnap’ look more outrageous the Israelis come up with the tunnel, tank, sentry post attack and fire fight story which the Palestinians are happy to go along with because it makes them look like heroes for doing the job. Of course, once the Palestinians have said ‘Yeah, that’s what happened’ it’s impossible for them to back off their claim. Naturally, if they had known what the implications were going to be, they would have been far better off saying that the Israeli soldier was caught while in the Gaza side of the border.

This is just one feasible scenario but really I don’t know what happened; I just know that all is not what it seems and, whatever did happen, it wasn’t the way we are being told!

I don't believe this story. The truth is that while the palestinians were digging the tunnel "secretly", the Israeli secret services pretended they didn't know and did nothing to stop the abduction. The poor soldiers were sacrificed by Israeli government as an excuse to start a large war. SIMPLE AS THAT.Don't try to make some extraordinary theories. The tunnel exists and it was made by the palestinians.

Didn't the Israeli's also drive tanks and laden water bowsers across parts of the area to collapse these "tunnels"?

I thoroughly agree that this is a false flag op, like the missiling of ships, it is a way to circumnavigate the UN so America can go to war with Iran and Syria and Israel is playing the patsy.

Last year Israeli soldiers were CAUGHT red handed laying explosives claiming they were Palestinian not realising they had been observed.

I suspect that Israel's new PM with Bush has set its sights on annexing Lebanon.

And yes this was planned, Bolton was prepared, Bush was prepared, even Blair seemed unfazed by the suddeness of this.

Bush tried to use Iran and its resolution to save his own skin, wanted to be seen as the worlds saviour and it once again went wrong, now it is time to punish the "ragheads" and with three years down the line US thieving corporations in Iraq have still failed to pump a significant amount of oil, they must be getting desperate.

I hope that Bush must understand that to succeed he would have to garrison the planet and point a gun at everyones head, I suspect that the collapse of the US is just round the corner unfortunately...

Voice of the Ancient one, if it is a false flag then why does Nasrala (head of Hezbollah) admitted that he has the prisoners? He even wants to trade for Palestinian prisoners but Olmert thinks that if he trades with hezbolah, this will encourage even more similar operations and he denied to trade.

the world is run by the jews. this is the simple explanation for all your questions regarding collusion on the part of seemingly opposing sides. they are not opposing. they are all working for the same people. if it seems too simple for you, and you are therefore inclined to dismiss it outright, then you will never come to the truth of the current world situation, which is merely the mopping up phase of the war that ended in 1945 with the defeat of all significant resistence to jewish world domination.

best short summary i ever ran across of the modern (English Revolution to WWII) phase of the Jewish war against the planet earth was Ramsay's "Nameless War." it's available in HTML:

http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/nameindx.htm

http://www.sweetliberty.org/issues/wars/nameless/intro.shtml

and .pdf:

www.douglasreed.co.uk/nameless.pdf

you will find almost all of the material in Nameless War gone into much more thoroughly Reed's "Controversy of Zion":

http://www.yamaguchy.netfirms.com/reed/contents.html

also available as a Word file here, though the geocities site will only allow one or two downloads a day:

If making excuses for Muslim Arab terrorists, direct decendents of the sacks of shit who collaborated with Hitler, passes for leftist thought, then don't wonder why so many of us are sick of your brainless conspiracy (The all powerful Jew trash) garbage!

Hitler. wasn't he the guy who was going to take over the world? with the little mustache? like Charlie Chaplin?

yeah, i've heard of that dude. though i'm not a "leftist" myself. he was all evil and stuff, so the Super Good Guy americans went over to the other side of the world and bombed the shit out of his whole country. -- cuz he was evil. don't ya know. and was gonna take over the whole entire planet and turn us all into robot machine people whose right arms are always sticking up funny.

americans is so cool. they always be stopping all these evil mofo's from takin' over the world and havin' weapons of mass destruction and messing with peoples' democracy and such like. i'm so glad i was born in america. land of the free. and the brave. and oh so intelligent.

excuse me now. i think i'm gonna go watch those Good Guy Israelis -- not as good as us, of course, but they're still kinda new -- i'm gonna go watch them bomb the shit out of the Lebanese people, who were going to just about be evil any second.

Poseidon writes: "It's funny how Israel's shills and trolls attempt to use straw man fallacies to make their "arguments".

I'm not Jewish. I'm not Israeli. I've never been to Israel.

Feel free to call my opinions "zionist" if you wish, but do not apply the adjective "Israeli" to me.

So Poseidon, how long have you "known Damo" in the blogosphere sense? I'm guessing you'd never heard of him until a week or so ago when he hit the big-time in the anti-semetic-blogosphere with his tunnel article. Am I right?

Well, some of us have known Damo for several years now. He has been participating in numerous "mainstream" blogs, and attempting to turn every discussion on anything into a discussion about how evil Israel is. The guy is obsessed with Israel and jews, which I guess is fairly common for anti-semites and neo-nazis.

And you have the audacity to call anyone who challenges him a troll! Now THAT'S funny! None of us were ever even particulalrly interested in Israel. It was just that Damo talks incessantly of nothing else.

And you also deftly dodge the meat of my comment, Poseidon.

1. Damo made a claim that is not supported by evidence on other people's blogs.2. He was asked to provide the source for these claims.3. He point-blank refused to do so.

Therefore, it is totally legitimate for us to assume that Damo fabricated his story, and that Damo is a liar.

Damo has had ample opportunity to respond to this, but has not.

As the original anonymous poster wrote: "....claiming but not supplying proof, the fertile land of the liar in my mind."

What is so unreasonable of this?

I'm sure you disbelieve plenty of things that Israel says and claim that they haven't provided proof.

So why would you expect others to take Damo's unsupported claim as true, when all the evidence contradicts him?

"This is probably a case of one who is paid per posting rather than by the hour."

Ho ho. You guys just can't get it through your skulls that people actually disagree with you. Always looking for a conspiracy, huh?

Anonymous/E Burrows wrote: 'Poseidon writes: "It's funny how Israel's shills and trolls attempt to use straw man fallacies to make their "arguments."

I'm not Jewish. I'm not Israeli. I've never been to Israel.'

What caught my eye was that the comment about Damian making claims re the Hezbollah capture of two Israeli soldiers combined non sequitur, ad hominem and straw man in one fell swoop. This thread is about tunnels on the Gaza border and the capture or loss of Cpl Gilad Shalit, not Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev somewhere near the Lebanese border. If Damian has made a claim of where the alleged Hezbollah capture took place, been challenged and repeatedly refused to provide evidence, etc, then a link to this should have been provided.

As far as I am concerned, zionists and Israel's groupies, shills and trolls are interchangeable. They are all apologists for state sponsored terrorism, massacres, war crimes, blood for profit, false flags, deception, illegal detention, abuse of prisoners, etc. Israel's "useful fools" are not necessarily Israeli or Jewish.

I vaguely became aware of Damian several months ago.

I don't see any problem with someone specialising in exposing Israeli state terrorism and war crimes. Most Jews are not liars, con artists or war criminals. There is an elite group of zionists who include the highest levels of the Israeli, US and UK governments - and the opposition - and international Jewish organizations. These are the guilty party. The so-called Jews amongst this group originated from ancient Khazaria, east of the Black Sea; hence they are not even Semites. The Arabs whom they target with their US-manufactured or paid for bombs and illegal weapons are Semitic peoples, hence the zionists are the "anti-Semites". The zionists try to label their critics as "anti-Semites", which is rather like a mass murderer calling an honest policeman a "mass murderer".

As for where the two Israeli soldiers were captured or went missing, zionists will probably just accept the zionist press assertions of a "cross border raid" by Hezbollah. The Asian press reported that Israeli troops were ambushed by Hezbollah on Lebanon's side of the border. This is the version I would favor. It was just another USS Maine, Pearl Harbor, Gulf of Tonkin, or 9/11 (with a 7/11 as a distraction).

Whatreallyhappened has a selection of reports demonstrating that the two Israeli soldiers were arrested inside Lebanese sovereign territory. E.g., "Lebanese police said that the two [Israeli] soldiers were arrested as they entered the town of Aitaa al-Chaab inside the Lebanese border" (Bahrain News Agency).

Jews are pathological liars to the point that they believe any and all of their lies are beyond the ability of the Goyim to discern. jews hate the Goyim and believe them to be sub human. If you were going to tell a lie to your dog would you care that it was unbelievable? No you wouldn't because you would assume your dog is too stupid to know the difference. It is always the chutzpah of the jew that leads to them getting caught with their hands in the cookie jar crying persecution.

Search This Blog

Followers

About Me

is an Aeronautical Engineer, Historian and general carer of what goes on in the world.
Apart from an earlier career in engineering, Lataan also has a First Class Honours BA degree in History and a PhD in International Politics.
All material on this site is available for use without permission but it would be appreciated if the source is acknowledged.